


Brave Enough for Two

by SylvanWitch



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: As sweeping insights go, Steve’s discovery that he loves his partner could be better timed.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 10
Kudos: 121





	Brave Enough for Two

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another fill for my personal prompts bingo card, this one for the square that reads: "What would I be without you?"

“What would I be without you, babe?” Danny asks.

It’s one of those rhetorical questions, the kind that don’t require answers, except the way he says it makes Steve think his partner is fishing.

Danny might complain a lot and have more neuroses than Freud himself could have identified, but he’s not usually insecure, at least not where Steve is concerned.

This kind of neediness is uncharacteristic, and it sends alarming tingles down Steve’s spine, like someone’s dragging cold fingers across the back of his neck.

“Don’t you mean, ‘What would I _do_ without you?’” Steve shoots back, going for the low-hanging fruit of deflection. Pretend Danny didn’t say it, pretend Steve didn’t understand the subtext, and they were right back on Denial Street, where they had managed to live in a more or less quietly furious detente for more than a year.

“No, Stephen,” and now Steve knows he’s in trouble, the pissy turn-up at the corner of Danny’s mouth more of a tell, even, than the use of his full first name. “I think I know what I said, and I meant it.”

“Well...” Steve stalls, hoping Danny will throw his mouth into the gap, like he usually does.

This time, his partner is quiet as a seasoned interrogator, and those cold fingers start doing a tarantella down Steve’s back.

He clears his throat, reaching for more time, but Danny’s impatient huff signals that Steve is doing himself no favors by delaying.

“Uh, I guess you’d be…shot at less often?”

It’s the wrong thing to point out, as relationships—normal ones (work or otherwise)—don’t typically cause quite so many trips to the hospital.

Danny’s snort of disdain is enough to drive Steve to desperate measures.

“I don’t know, Danny,” he says, venting his frustration. He hates playing guessing games.

“I guess you’d be _happier_?”

He says it because in the middle of the night, when he has woken with cordite stench still coating his throat and the sting of sweat in phantom wounds, Steve imagines that Danny wishes he’d never met him, that Steve had let him go on with his quiet life of misery and pining, brightened by regular visits with Gracie.

On _really_ bad nights, Steve would pace his living room imagining his own life without Danny in it, and even the susurrus of the breathing sea so close to his back door couldn’t ease the constriction of his chest, a tightness around his heart that had nothing to do with pain and everything— _every_ thing—to do with hope.

That thought knocks the breath out of him again, and he feels the telltale squeeze around his diaphragm.

As sweeping insights go, Steve’s discovery that he loves his partner could be better timed, given they’re going 65 on the Pali and they just passed the last exit for miles.

“Hey,” Danny says, worry evident in his tone. “You okay? You need to pull over, let me drive?”

Steve swallows hard and shakes his head. He’s a Navy SEAL. He’s survived SERE training and actual torture. He can find his way back to a regular heartbeat.

“Babe,” Danny says hoarsely, steadying hand on his thigh, which does nothing to ease the tension that’s crushing the wind out of him. “There’s no way I’d be happier without you. You know that, right? You’ve got to know that.”

With a jerk of the wheel, Steve skids the Camaro to a skewed stop in the breakdown lane, truck careening past them, horn going, a receding Doppler blare.

He grips the steering wheel at the top with both hands and rests his hands against his white knuckles.

“Babe,” Danny says again, “Talk to me. What’s going on in that thick head of yours, huh?”

“Why’re you asking me this, Danny? What do you want me to say?”

When there’s gunfire to be run into, a bomb to defuse, some psycho killer bent on apocalyptic destruction—hell, when there are undated leftovers in the work fridge—Steve’s the man for the job. He throws himself at danger with the willful abandon of a trained killer who long ago had regard for his own safety beaten out of him by training, experience, abandonment, and grief.

But Steve can’t find the courage to say what he should here, and he’s ashamed of taking the coward’s way out, throwing the ball back at Danny hard enough to hope it’s going to bounce—take them right back to pretending they never got this close to the end of the game and the beginning of something real.

Danny, though, says, “My life would suck without you in it,” like it’s not the most terrifying declaration, like he didn’t just realign their entire world.

Even here, Steve sees the space Danny has left him to let this go and walk away, sees the way he’s willing to sacrifice himself so Steve can feel safe again. Steve could play it cool, answer like a bro, wrap a forearm around Danny’s neck and haul him for a half-hug across the console.

They could drive away, track down their suspect, get a plate lunch, retreat to their respective offices, file paperwork, go home separately, start over the next day.

All Steve has to do is what he’s always done before.

He takes a breath, holds it for a four-count, breathes it out slow, not surprised to hear it shake.

He reaches across the car, wraps a hand around Danny’s neck, tugs him closer, turns his head.

Takes in the sky-blue eyes, wide and waiting, and Danny’s mouth, a little open, as if he might protest the rough handling or say Steve’s name the way he sometimes does, half fond, half aggrieved.

Takes in the solid body, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he fills the space at his side.

Takes in the quick hitch of his breath, the hope in it.

Takes his time with the kiss, a long, gentle pressure, a promise.

He pulls away feeling dazed, his heart a free-floating madness unmoored in the wide space of his chest.

“I—” and despite the untrammeled heart, the heat in his eyes, his hand creasing Danny’s shirt where he clutches his biceps to bring him closer, Steve can’t say what he means.

“I know, babe,” Danny says against his mouth. “I love you, too,” brave enough for the both of them, for now.


End file.
